Topic Proposal Outline: Income Redistribution Policy

This assignment must be submitted in the form of a bulleted outline, length 1 page, 12pt times new roman font, single-spaced. The purpose of this assignment is to select your general paper topic, identify the particular aspect of this topic you wish to focus on, and identify the important normative and economic questions associated with it
1. General Topic Selection. Your general topic must be centered around a United States economic policy issue of some kind. It is strongly advised that you choose a topic that is not macroeconomic in nature; it is often substantially easier to work on state policy issues. Your first bullet in the outline should be a statement of your general topic. For example, that general topic might be “Minimum Wage Policy”.
2. Identification of Major Normative Issues. You must include a discussion of the important normative aspects of your overall topic, identifying the important outcomes and aspects of the issue that inform whether or not a given policy is a good idea. For example, if your general topic is “Minimum Wage Policy”, one of your normative questions might be“Are low wage workers better off after a minimum wage increase?” Each major normative issue should receive its own bullet point, possibly with clarifying subpoints.
3. Identification of Major Economic Questions. These are the key questions identified in the economics literature about what the consequences of the policy are and why the policy has those consequences. For example, if your general topic is “Minimum Wage Policy”, these questions might include “Do minimum wage increases increase unemployment?”, “By how much do minimum wage increases increase earnings for low wage workers?”, “Is there monopsony in the labor market?”, “How does the effect of minimum wage increases on unemployment vary by local conditions?”, and so on. Each major economic question should receive its own bullet point, with clarifying subpoints that also include the literature's best answers to the question.
4. Specific Topic Selection. You need to propose a particular aspect of your topic you wish to focus on, generally just one of the major economic questions. This particular aspect of the issue must be the part you intend to focus your own data analysis on and will be your paper's research question. While you should discuss all other important aspects of your topic as part of the economic question discussion and literature review in the paper, this will be the only part you personally try to clarify with your statistical analysis. For example, if your general topic is “Minimum Wage Policy”, you might choose to focus on the question “Do minimum wage increases raise wages even for people earning above the new minimum wage?” and may leave the question “Do minimum wage increases raise unemployment for low wage workers?” to the part of your final paper where you discuss the literature's stance on the overall issue. One of your outline’s bullet points should be your specific topic of interest, stated in the form of a question and clearly labeled as the topic you intend to do your data analysis on. Your choice of topic should be something that has not already been completely solved elsewhere in the economic literature and should be something that can be plausibly addressed using publicly available Census or other data. Itis is often advisable to choose a specific question that is tied neatly to a cost-benefit analysis related to your topic. Note: you may not select as your specific topic a question that is already being addressed in class. Please ask if you are unsure whether or not your topic will be covered in class.